Slip n' Slide
We cannot stop watching this perfect baseball slide
In the history of slides, there have been some doozies, from the acrobatic (every insane catcher-vaulting flip) to the comedic (Willie Mays Hayes coming up short at second), but until last night, I had never seen one that is aesthetically perfect. That all changed when Trea Turner executed a slide with so much panache, elan, flair, verve, pizzazz, and a bunch of other adjectives, that I'm still watching it on a loop hours later. No more words—check it:
It's my job to analyze why this is so special, but I'm not really sure how to begin. In some ways, it's the jazz of slides—if you have to ask, you'll never know. But I'll still try ... it's the gliding, first, the sheer smoothness of it, like someone coasting by you on skates, but that someone is a J. Crew model with a scarf. Second, it's the standing, which just seems to follow in a natural motion, as if while the rest of us are exerting ourselves and possibly grunting to go from horizontal to vertical, he is just whisked up on a rogue breeze. And finally, it's the turn, which is as close as anyone in MLB has come to Michael Jackson busting a move.
The cherry on top is that the whole thing is so damn casual. Within four seconds of video, you can just tell how cool Trea Turner is, and for someone like me who has never had an isolated four seconds like that in his entire life, it's irresistible. This sort of, uhhhh, motion-based transcendence is something I will aspire to but never achieve, so all I can do is live vicariously through Trea Turner as he transports to that ethereal space. The world is burning, but we'll always have the slide.